Drama
Doctor Who
The good Doctor’s been flitting around time, space and the BBC since 1963. Now he’s also a fixture in the US, toting his curiously British brand of sci-fi in his highly mobile TARDIS. Just how safe is this contraption?
Fans of Supernatural know the story of John and Mary Winchester. The pair met, fell in love, got married and then had two children, Sam and Dean.
But then Mary was killed by a yellow-eyed demon. And John spent the rest of his days hunting down the beast, training his sons to do the same.
Of course, fans also know that wasn’t the whole story. Mary was born into a family of hunters. And she had been raised her whole life to kill demons and monsters.
She was murdered because years ago she had made a deal with a yellow-eyed demon to bring John back to life after it killed him and her parents. And instead of staying out of the way while he collected on that debt, she intervened.
But that wasn’t the whole story, either.
Years after learning this about their mother, Sam and Dean discovered that their dad was born into the monster-fighting life too. Only he was part of a centuries-old order called the Men of Letters—sort of a “paranormal freemason” society, as they’re described in The Winchesters.
Again, as fans know, Henry Winchester (John’s father) and the entire American chapter of the Men of Letters was wiped out by a demon called Abaddon before Henry could teach John about this. And John spent his life believing his father had abandoned him and his mom as a result.
And now, we’re told, that still wasn’t the whole story.
Dean Winchester (the narrator) promises to put the pieces of this tale together in a way that just might surprise its fans. But in order to do that, he’ll have to start at the beginning—the day his parents met, in fact.
John Winchester, fresh from a two-year tour in Vietnam, bumps into Mary Campbell outside a movie theater. Meet-cute.
Later that night, John visits an address given to him in a letter from his father. He’s ambushed by a demon. But before the demon can kill him (and take the mysterious key included in his father’s equally mysterious letter), Mary arrives and exorcises the baddie.
They use the key to enter the building and discover it’s an abandoned Men of Letters bunker.
Henry’s letter claims that John will be able to find all the answers he’s been searching for here. But Mary’s hoping to find some answers of her own.
Her father, Samuel Campbell (who’s gone missing), sent her to the bunker to retrieve a document containing clues on how to kill a new kind of monster.
Soon, John, Mary, and Mary’s friends, Carlos (a fellow hunter) and Latika (a librarian who’s helped Samuel and Mary with research on monster hunts before) hop in a van and set out to find out what really happened to their fathers.
What they discover is a new race of evil beings from another dimension—one that wants to wipe out every human, demon and monster on Earth and take possession of the world for themselves.
The Winchesters, produced by Supernatural alum Jensen Ackles (who played Dean Winchester on the series and reprises his role here as the narrator) is everything you would expect in a Supernatural spin-off but perhaps more than you were counting on.
Language is mild but present. We don’t see any sexual content onscreen in the pilot, but that’s likely to change since—as fans of the series already know—John and Mary eventually start dating and get married. We’re also introduced to Carlos, a slightly effeminate and openly bisexual man.
Unsurprisingly, hunting monsters is a bloody business. People get beat up and even killed when hunters don’t get there in time to save them. And even when they do arrive, there’s still plenty of blood to go around as the good guys hack and slash their way through everything that goes bump in the night.
And, of course, you can’t talk about a Supernatural spin-off without, you know, talking about the supernatural itself.
Much of the original Supernatural lore was based on various monster and religious lore from around the world. Sam and Dean Winchester spent 15 seasons fighting off not only monsters and demons, but angels and gods too. (And in the final seasons, God—with a capital “G”—became the series antagonist, determined to wipe the universe clean of what He decided was a failed experiment.)
The Winchesters isn’t pitting John and Mary against God or angels yet, but Mary and her friends give John a crash-course in killing monsters and exorcising demons in the first episode. And the new big-bad in town is sizing up to be just as evil as Lucifer and all his minions.
Much like this show’s originator, this explanation of John and Mary’s backstory probably dives into unwatchable territory for most families. But hey, at least the music is still good.
Demons (who have black eyes) possess multiple people. Hunters exorcise them using Holy Water, salt and Latin verses. Some people use anti-possession charms to ward off demons. Someone uses a magical box to pull a demon out of a woman’s body in a cloud of black smoke and kill it. (And we hear the box can kill other types of monsters as well.)
A demon-possessed woman is hit by a car. (She’s OK but once the demon is exorcised, a hunter mentions she might have a couple of broken legs.) Other possession victims aren’t so lucky and die after they are exorcised.
John beheads a monster with a silver blade. Characters fight demon-possessed people and monsters. John accidentally punches Mary in the face while trying to hit a demon. A man is pursued by a spider-looking monster. (And we later hear the man has gone missing)
John has flashbacks to his time in the Vietnam War (with many explosions)—specifically an incident where his buddy stepped on a land mine and died. He sees visions of the man’s dead and bloody body and wonders if he’s being haunted Later, he cuts a silver cross out of his arm. (It had been worn by his friend and became shrapnel that embedded itself in John’s arm when he died.)
A man purposely cuts his hand and uses the blood to open a magical lock. Mary tells John that magic and monsters are real. We see lots of runic symbols. Some crosses adorn headstones in a cemetery. We hear that a dead woman is suffering in hell. A man crosses himself making a reference to Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison instead of the Holy Trinity.
We hear about family members of hunters who were killed by monsters. Mary expresses anger that she was forced into the hunting life by her parents. We hear Latika is a pacifist. We see a movie marquee advertising Slaughter House 5. Mary makes a few empty but violent threats.
John and his mom learn that John’s dad, Henry, didn’t abandon them as they previously thought, but mysteriously disappeared while protecting them from something evil.
John opens a beer but his mom takes it away from him. Even though he’s of legal age, she’s mad at him for enlisting in the army early and illegally (he forged his dad’s signature on a waiver). Mary breaks and enters into several buildings.
We hear Carlos made out with Mary’s ex-boyfriend while he was in an on-again, off-again relationship with another girl. We also hear he has a crush on Mary now.
We hear several uses of “d–n,” “h—” and “p-ss.”
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
The good Doctor’s been flitting around time, space and the BBC since 1963. Now he’s also a fixture in the US, toting his curiously British brand of sci-fi in his highly mobile TARDIS. Just how safe is this contraption?
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